Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in kylaw's LiveJournal:

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Friday, June 19th, 2009
2:00 pm	Are You Game? Registration for this year's Gencon Australia has now gone live. I can now announce that I will be running my freeform, Crosses To Bear, starting 6.00 pm on Saturday, 19 September 2009. -- The Transylvanian Alps, 1209 AD... "I don't care that the peasants said there was going to be a blizzard. They also said that in these mountains, wolves walk as do men and blood-drinking spirits ride the wind; I mean, really! This road will put us in Constantinople within the week, so long as we don't run into any Templars..." "So I was wrong about the blizzard. But I'm sure that's just the wind howling. Look, a light! A castle! May God be praised for his mercy!" -- Crosses To Bear is a freeform game for 30 upstanding crusaders, noble ladies, gallant troubadors, wily merchants, shady hangers-on, Templars and of course, their Hosts.  Costume is essential, characters may be pre-booked by contacting the designer and quoting your Gencon registration number. If any of this sounds familiar, it is indeed a reworking of the game I ran at Macquariecon '92. It is dedicated to the memory of my late conspirator, Emma Turkington. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 1st, 2009
9:18 am	Fishing for Inspiration Today, voting opens for Triple J's Hottest 100 Songs of All Time. As distinct from their annual round up, you can vote for your 10 favourite songs composed by anyone at any time. So I think we should all vote for 'O Fortuna' by Carl Orff. Yes, the opening track off the Carmina Burana. Who doesn't know it? Who doesn't love it? Who hasn't used it to pace the climactic scene of a story or RPG? Alright, probably quite a few people haven't done that but I know I'm not the only one. And my point stands. If any song in western culture deserves to make this list, it is this. "Oh Fortune, empress of the world!" Or as we sang in the Year Ten choir, "Oh for tuna, salmon and plaice..." Current Music: Actually, a group called Omen did a pretty good electro version. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
5:05 pm	A Festival of One Today I was seriously considering going into the city and seeing what the Sydney Writer's Festival had to offer. It's been running since Monday, but today had an interesting batch of panels, ranging in topic from novel vs.short stories to neuroplasticity. Instead, I stayed at home and wrote. As a result, I may now permit myself to announce the completion of :- NECROMANCE, DRAFT II, ACT II It improves on the first draft in many respects - the whole investigative thing moves along much better and the Act climax is now set up properly (along with several other things). But what caused the real problems and the increasing need to rewrite chapters from scratch was my decision to tone down the magical hijinks, made while redrafting Act I and in the pursuit of sense. Magic should always be the most sensible of plot elements, used for practical purposes in accordance with established laws. It should never be used gratuitously or for effect. Above all, it should never substitute for quick thinking, fast talking and unmitigated sneakiness. Perhaps I should mention my protagonist is a lawyer. It's a bit of a truism, but of the three keystone inspirations for this project, what really got the book started, not one still remains in the narrative. These were i) the corner cubicle in the office, into which people go only to return as souless zombies, ii) the fact that the "Palace Gates" in the Royal Botanic Garden actually did once lead to a palace, and iii) the spectral giant squid. I repeat, these things are NOT in the book. There are lawyers, magic and both the unliving and undying. And romance; you shall have to wait to find out how these things all fit together. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that. The early indications are that more of Act III may survive than I first assumed. The characters all have set emotional arcs and certain events, like the High Court appeal, simply have to occur. But the ending has changed completely from the one that put my alpha reader into shock (no, this was not a good thing). A certain somebody's dialogue will be almost completely rewritten, now that I know him better. And thanks to some painstaking foreshadowing, the Great Revelation that I botched completely the first time round should now work. And the big necromantic duel should be cool. You know, I really thought I'd have finished the whole thing by now. And be on to the sequel. Sigh. That's authorial time for you. Current Music: David is playing Guitar Hero: World Tour. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
11:28 am	Running the Gauntlet Got them yesterday. From Misc Custom-made to fit my ridiculously thin hands by local armourer and weapon-smith Adam McKay. Now I have to see if I can save up for one of his helmets. I've returned to medieval re-enactment after a distressingly long, health-related interval (so kind of like gothing). My memories suggested that if I was going to do this at all, I needed properly fitting gauntlets, so I shelled out and can now shell up. I've been training with the Black Ravens for several weeks now and I tell you, it beats the hell out of the gym! And could... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 1st, 2009
10:03 am	The Battle Continues... From Cats Although some combatants are running out of energy. A fine Samhain to all! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
6:49 pm	But down in the Underground... It's personal, okay? Current Music: "Kartika", The Eternal (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 21st, 2009
10:25 am	On the Big Scream! It's official! 'Bad Reception', a short film on which I have writing, production and acting credits, is screening in competition at the A Night of Horror film festival. The multi-faceted talents of jblum , jack_ryder , shellshear and mrteufel also feature to great advantage. Specifically, it is screening in Horror Comedies and Animations, shorts program #1 which starts at 4.00 pm on Saturday, March 28th at the Dendy, Newtown. Yes, a week from today! If you're in Sydney, you might want to pop along and have a laugh (in case you're wondering, we did mean it to be funny). If you're not in Sydney, try this link to get the general idea. Current Mood: artistic (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
9:00 am	Confessions of an English Opium Voyeur I have been reading Thomas de Quincey, a 19th century English intellectual who was a contemporary of all the Romantic greats and friend to many. He is best known, however, for a circumstance enshrined in the title of his best known work: Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Some may also have heard of the sequel, Suspiria de Profundis. It was his best known work at the time, as well as being the one that has survived in the popular consciousness. This alone marks it as unusual. I came to it via my usual winding path, tracing contemporary pop cultural references back to the Weird Tales set and on to the gothic novel. My impetus to seek it out lay in seeing Dario Argento's Mother of Tears, the film which completes the trilogy of Suspiria and Inferno. I have long been aware that the inspiration for Argento's three archetypal witches lay in a section of Suspiria de Profundis, to which Fritz Leiber also alludes in his novel Our Lady of Darkness. Michael Moorcock lauds de Quincey in Tales of Wizardry and Wild Romance and Lovecraft and Clark Ashton-Smith are said to have taken inspiration, if nothing else. De Quincey spends some time at the start of the Confessions insisting that he is doing this as a warning to others who might be tempted to experiment in the same manner. But at the start of Suspiria, he further confesses this was but an excuse for him to record the substance of his dreams. So, having at last read them, what can I report? Or am I like the hero of Ashton-Smith's Ubbo-Sathla, who can only approach the primal text by reducing himself to protoplasm? My first observation may not be scintillating, but is I think important. De Quincey is self-consciously, unashamedly elitest. He is aware that he is part of a privileged class and considers himself gifted amongst them. He is not unaware of the social divisions and suffering of his time - indeed, the experiences of his adolesence grant him insights that haunt him the rest of his days - but he is not of the masses and will not pretend commonality with them. Which I for one find incredibly refreshing. "If a man 'whose talk is of oxen,' should become an Opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) - he will dream about oxen: whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher..." I therefore qualify my comments: de Quincey is best appreciated by a well-read and above all sensitive soul. Much of both books is taken up with recollections of de Quincey's childhood and adolesence, which as he explains is necessary for the reader to understand his dreams. These are pages not to be regretted, both because he is utterly correct - the eventual impact is astounding - and the exquisite quality of both the reminisence and the prose. De Quincey wrote one novel, described as a gothic, which is not readily available and by reports appalling. This is ironic, because judging by the Confessions, his life formed a perfectly acceptable gothic novel and he himself an archetypical gothic protagonist. That these are usually female is, I think, to his credit. This next observation may be going out on a limb, but I further see in de Quincey a phenomenon I detect in such novels as The Monk and Melmoth the Wanderer. This is a tension between the accepted, Christian spirituality of the day and - everything else. De Quincey is especially troubled by the inconsistency between belief in Heaven and irrepressible human grief. The deaths of young children, a recurring motif in his life, can only be accepted in terms of a blessing. And yet such a transmutation seems to him both impossible and obscene. It is to deal with this that he, eventually, shares his vision of the Three Mothers. I have a sense that this is only with reluctance, out of a need for completion. Their appearence is carefully qualified with references to the permission of God. "Let us call them, therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household; and their paths are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no end... Like God, whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven - by changes on earth - by pulses in secret rivers - heraldries painted on darkness - and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on mirrors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols, - mine are the words." I will not speak casually of  Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum. De Quincey's words should be read in context and no matter the actual time and location of their reading, I say you shall be in darkness and solitude and perhaps you too shall whisper, yes, them. These texts are dense and parts would probably be heavy going for someone who has not, for instance, managed to get through Melmoth the Wanderer. They are at time eccentric in their arrangement and by the author's own admission, Suspiria de Profundis is incomplete. But they are worth reading not only for the visions, but for the process they record, which may be considered in several lights. There is an addict and a depressive here, using every resource of his superior mind to work through his symptoms and by understanding, control them. Some commentators consider him a forerunner of Freud, though I would say at least, let it be Jung. There may also be an occultist here, albeit a conflicted one, recording his insights in a manner both qualified and daringly open. Perhaps there is another lineage of writings here, though one that would require much more reading on my part to trace. In summary, to read de Quincey is a worthwhile exercise and one would I recommend. As to eating opium, I really cannot say. But I wonder now more than ever how injecting drugs (morphine at the time) can have ever taken off, when a goblet of ruby-coloured laudanum could have such potent effects, was so much more elegant and could be readily obtained from the local pharmacist! Current Mood: contemplative (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
8:11 am	A Pleasant Surprise Eden Studio Presents #3 is now available as a PDF from Drivethru RPG. It contains no less than two articles I wrote for the Unisystem, a one-off urban horror scenario entitled "The Scalper" and "The Court of Chimera", a readily transplantable castle setting complete with conspiring inhabitants. It also, I note, contains an article for the Buffy game by d_fuses . Fancy that! It's kind of like the Demon supplement which was in theory written entirely by Australian freelancers. This book has been somewhat delayed from its original release date but I hope it is enjoyed in all the myriad nooks and crannies where such things lodge. Current Mood: cheerful (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
7:21 pm	For the Curious As promised some months ago, the full text of my report on Under the Blue Moon 2008 is now up on the Tabula Rasa website. With photos. The cropped version of this article ran originally in Black #3, along with some of the photos but not all. The faint of heart are warned that live piercings are involved. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 16th, 2009
7:44 am	A Tour of the City of Assassins My new short story, "A Tour of the City of Assassins", is now up at Ticonderoga Online. It might be thought the title says it all. Still, you may be interested in the other 3,000 or so words. My especial thanks is due to Russell Farr for his patience and insightful editing. And congratulations all round to the editorial team for restoring one of  Australia's oldest semi-pro webzines, in time for its (essentially) 10th anniversary! The new look Ticon 4 contains many interesting items, including fiction by Sue Isle and Matthew Tighe, reviews, Alisa Krasnostein on the graphic novel and speculation by Russell himself on the fate of the physical book which raises some valid points. I myself took a customer query about the Dymocks e-book readers yesterday. Shame I don't actually work there! Current Mood: happy Current Music: Dead Can Dance, "In the Realm of a Dying Sun" (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
4:30 pm	A Truce... ... has been brokered, with access to the back balcony granted to the cats. Peace now reigns. Or just possibly, the gargoyle is inedible. From Cats (2 Comments |Comment on this)
3:41 pm	World of Writecraft Kyla Ward (1st level Necromance-er) has earned the achievement SECOND DRAFT OF ACT I I started the rewrite last October. The process is taking longer than I had hoped, due to the large slabs I ended up having to rewrite from scratch so they made sense. I already know there will be large changes to the second Act. I can only shudder at the likely state of Act 3, which I wrote in such a rush last year. Consciously dividing this novel into Acts was one of the things I did when planning the second draft and has actually helped enormously. I have great respect for traditional narrative, despite being co-author of  "a piece of outre weirdness with an experimental structure" (as Prismatic is described by Rob Hood in "The End of the Line", Black #3. Thanks again, Rob! ) Among other things, it allows me to compare my word count with the same point in the first draft. At this rate, the second draft will be about 10,000 words longer, less depressing and make more sense. Necromance is the first volume in a projected series. The next two books have been plotted in detail and the two after that in brief. I have written the majority of the world "bible", including a detailed history starting three hundred years prior to the books, and drawn some interesting maps, as well as putting together a soundtrack. I am, in short, reasonably ready to run the RPG, if only that would get the rewrite done and my regular group had any tolerance for highly emotional, character-driven stories heavy on investigation and mood (come on guys! You know what happened the last time I tried to run Call of Cthulhu!) This writing stuff is intense. And things keep happening, like bits of relevant information falling into my lap and places described in the book (which is set in central Sydney) looking and feeling strange, and maybe, possibly, some ritualistic synergy? I put it all down to normal, writerly obsession of course. And fatigue toxins.   Now to go let the creatures of Azeroth know how much I love them. Current Mood: accomplished (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
8:02 am	Blue and Black Slightly delayed for technical reasons, Black #3 is out in Australian newsagents now. It contains my feature article, "Coffin Culture", as well as my somewhat truncated report on this year's Under the Blue Moon gothic festival. I have negotiated with the Editor to post the full report to this journal once the current issue is off the shelves. There is also a large and detailed article on the Lothian Dark Suspense line-that-was-to-be, of which Prismatic was one of the only four actually released. This was unexpected: Shane hit me for quotes but I thought this was just going to be in his regular column. It is a fine piece: the whole affair seems quite enthralling from this distance. Add to this Gary Kemble's sensitive exploration of the practice of Satanism (give or take a photo caption or two), the Alice Cooper interview, and of course ashamel 's column, and you are in for an interesting read if I dare say so myself! Current Mood: accomplished (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
11:12 am	Terrible Things... ... have been happening at our place. The arrival of the kittens has upset the pecking order, and it's every small furry creature for itself! Happy Halloween! Current Music: 'The Sleep Of Reason', The Eternal (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
5:30 pm	Black and Blue, and Another Unwise Meme Spent the last week Under the Blue Moon. During which I saw, did and wore some very interesting things in some extreme weather conditions. Full report in the next issue of Black magazine. In the meantime, here's another unwise meme. Your result for The Mythological God Test... Coyote Indeed, you are 75% erudite, 83% sensual, 63% martial, and 92% saturnine. Coyote was an important being to several Native American tribes. He was one of those tricksters that are found in several world mythologies, in fact very close in temperament and deed to Loki of the Norse pantheon. Eternally scavenging for food, he represents the most basic instincts, but in other narratives, he is also the father of the Indian people and a potent conductor of spiritual forces in the form of sacred dreams. In the 'Myth of the Stars and the Moon' he is shown as a wise counsellor even. There are more stories about him than stars in the sky. For example, did you hear the one about the 'Spying Moon'? It seems that someone had pinched the moon, and Coyote offered to stand in as replacement. Everyone agreed that he made a fine moon, but from his elevated position Coyote could see everything that was going on. Being of an irritating disposition, he couldn't resist blowing the whistle on friends and enemies alike. "Hey, look what Badger is doing behind his tepee!" Pretty soon everyone was sick of his snooping and voted him out of the sky. But nothing can keep Coyote down for long. Being an old show-off, he loves to impress the girls by juggling his eyeballs. One day he threw one so high it got stuck in the sky and became the star Arcturus. So even now he's keeping an eye on us all. The Fifteen Gods These are the 15 categories of this test. If you score above average in all or none of the four variables: Dagda. Erudite: Thoth. Sensual: Frey. Martial: Mars. Saturnine: Mictlantecuhtli. Erudite & Sensual: Amun. Erudite & Martial: Odin. Erudite & Saturnine: Anubis. Sensual & Martial: Zeus. Sensual & Saturnine: Cernunnos. Martial & Saturnine: Loki. Erudite, Sensual & Martial: Lug. Erudite, Sensual & Saturnine: Coyote. Erudite, Martial & Saturnine: Hades. Sensual, Martial & Saturnine: Pan. Take The Mythological God Test at HelloQuizzy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 15th, 2008
5:34 pm	Coffin Fit Good grief, we actually did it! Me and some friends, namely jblum , shellshear and Andrew O. have been wanting to get together and make a short film for a while now. Between us, we have experience in all the basic crew roles and have all the necessary equipment, plus that essential sympathy of purpose.  Which is to say, when I throw up a script involving a vampire with a mobile phone, everyone else says, "yeah, that's cool. Let's make that." Working really quite reasonable hours over the past two weekends, we did. At least, we've shot the thing. And there aren't going to be any pick-ups because today, all three coffins went back to the places we hired them, together with the plinth. That's what it was on the invoice and I'm not arguing. In a way it's a shame, because they really did dress up the garage, but having spent the better part of three days in one, I've lost all desire to do so ever again. Oh yeah, guess who was playing the vampire. I'd like to say this was guerilla film-making at its best; raw, improvised and uncompromising. But the whole process was actually quite civilised. Very calm. Fully catered. We had permission to be in the cemetery. And if I developed bronchitis and the Director put his back out, this had nothing to do with the shoot itself. Fact is, we've all done the guerilla, or at least the appallingly organised student film-making thing and we know better now.  That's where experience gets you. It struck me more than once that this was the kind of film I should have attempted at uni rather than the 45 minute post-apocalyptic epic that I occasionally remember when running a temperature at 3 o'clock in the morning. This one will run 7 minutes, as a hint of what we're aiming for. Three main roles, three interiors including the goth club and one exterior. Nice. It was delightful working with all you. Especially lovely to have two such fine actors to bounce off as jack-ryder  and "Carmilla". I can only hope "the others" were gentle with you. Robert, I can't thank you enough for making the trip and bringing your own latex. Julian, I don't know how we're going to handle your credit but you were indispensible. Jae, I'm really sorry about the three hour drive and hope you appreciate you were indispensible too. Of course, bringing off this project has extended and deepened our experience, in ways we cannot fully appreciate right now. But, to take a stab: * Coffins are much more comfortable when you have a hot water bottle. * A redundancy of three Directors is just about right. * Coughing in a corset really hurts. * Our garage does have mobile reception. * Minivacs for coffin maintenance, oh yes. * Eucalyptus is a hardwood. Balsa is a softwood. Next time, remind me to make the stake out of balsa and the cross out of - well, to buy one, actually. * Anywhere can be a goth club: it's all a matter of attitude. And black drapery. Lots of black drapery. * And, to confirm something I noticed during my live action roleplaying days, people can ignore anything if that means they don't have to deal with it. Our neighbours think we're rabid anyway. It's done. Now we can all go lie in a feverish sheep! Current Music: The Tea Party, "Transmissions" (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 7th, 2008
10:15 am	Gencon Memories As we all know, reality is a hallucinatory state brought on by low blood sugar and fatigue toxins, that hits you shortly after the convention ends. So, while some lucidity still remains to me: OUR FLIGHT from Sydney to Brisbane was cancelled. We were placed on an earlier flight. This was fortunate as that flight ended up leaving an hour after our original flight had been scheduled. High winds had apparently closed two out of the three runways at Sydney Airport. I still can't quite see how. We had to change seats to ones that were not next to the emergency exit because I refused to put my bag in the overhead locker. This is because I had my hat in it. This was the hat, for those who know. For everyone else, when you get to the picture from the Scarlet Pimpernel freeform, you will understand. On the way home I just wore it. THE HOTEL looked better on the website than it did at eight that night. However, it was where the map showed and they did have our reservation. And yes, the convention had paid as they had for our flights! What a wonderful arrangement! THE CONVENTION CENTRE was where the map showed as well, and only a short walk. Too long if you are dressed in velvet, it is raining and your umbrella is back at the con, but otherwise perfectly acceptable. Brisbane's South Bank is a strange mixture of aggressive urban renewal and subtropical decay. Our route took us past an old, white plaster catholic church with high windows and a mock-stone grotto containing a statue of the Virgin amongst the fringing palm trees. A coterie of homeless was camped there, every time we passed and whatever hour we passed except for Sunday morning when all these elderly people were filing into Mass. The first time I looked up inside the actual hall, I ducked. White piping, struts and corrugations that bowed out like the underside of a ship. Given the number of stormtroopers patrolling, I'm guessing one of the smaller star destroyers. THE PEOPLE that I hadn't seen in ages! This is obviously my year for renewing connections and rediscovering delights. I'd never really gotten how discreet the roleplaying and 'straight' SF/Fantasy fandoms were. Must be. I mean, there were people there we know currently. Nearly all our panels were with Stephen Dedman who like us bridges the gap in his work, plus one with Sean Williams who was there to be worshipped by Star Wars fans. But that one was chaired by Chris S. who I knew back in the days of ARIEL (the Australian Roleplaying Information Exchange Library) and who gave me such an exquisite introduction ("is there anything creative that Kyla hasn't done?" I blush, I blush!). And there was Phillipa B. who used to run Macquariecon and is now organising Sydcon (would you run something Kyla? It doesn't have to be new!). Michael W. Good grief! How long has it been since I saw him (in a frock coat, to boot)?  And Nigel, who remembers me from working at Disney? At Disney? And I've forgotten the name of the woman who said she played my freeform Imago at Necro X and it had "stayed with her". Damn it and thank you! THE PEOPLE that I met for the first time! Actually, I'd heard of Random and his freeforms long before, but this is the first time our paths have crossed. And Steve Darlington was but a vague web presence before. I was on a panel with Robin Laws, whose Laws of Gamesmastery have read and vainly attempted to practice (I just can't seem to get over the GM-is-not-the-author bar. This despite being on the panel about collaborative writing). I sat next to Tracy and Laura Hickman during signing sessions and ended up confessing that David and I met playing Dragonlance. And I won't hear a word against Peter and the other Gencon staff who were nothing but helpful, charming and enthused the entire time, not to mention correcting the spelling of my name at the signing booth. THE FREEFORMS were fantastic. I didn't actually play anything else, unless you count an impromptu game of Dungeontwister between panels. I had forgotten how much I really, truly, absolutely adore them. This is Lady Katharina Hellner, informal ambassador for Austria and chaperone of Her Grace the Grand Duchess Maria Anna. In Paris on the eve of La Grande Terreur to arrange a marriage, identify a murderer and start a war. Personally, I thought the Scarlet Pimpernel was a myth. He wasn't and nor was he the only fictional character present that evening. I absolutely can't say who the other was, but the debrief was hilarious. Superb freeform, by Megan B. This is Creation. And this is Random's Ball of Dreams, which is based on the masquerade sequence in Labryinth. I stutter typographically as I attempt to describe this: perhaps a few clarifying points will suffice. We started as archetypes with generally vague and distant memories. As the game proceeded, we received new character sheets with more information. Some of us turned out to be human beings who had been ensnared by the Goblin King. Some did not. At a certain point the film was put on. This was a timing device. The ball scene took place. We danced around Jareth and Sarah. And then we had until the climax to finally sort things out amongst ourselves. We danced. I danced with Sorrow, Chance and Destruction. I was enspelled by Caution but put things to rights by talking with Risk. I conspired with Desire, flirted with Anger and embraced Hate. Simply incredible. Unfortunately, Wit and Wedlock was cancelled at slightly past the last moment. So I am none the wiser as to what a Jane Austen RPG would actually entail. I mean, would there be vampires? Sigh. Perhaps next year? Actually, I'm thinking of running a game myself. THE PANELS Over the four days, I sat on Freelancing 101, Freelancing - the Next Step and the Australian Freelancers Round Table. The first was with David and Stephen, and went really well. I mean, people were asking questions and taking notes! The second was the one with Robin Laws and it went really well. The third (at 10.00 am on Sunday morning) was sparsely attended and turned into a really cosy chat session with an exchange of contacts. There were also two horror in gaming panels which we also did with Stephen and  which were hugely enjoyable. We decided amongst ourselves that the first one  should be more about  the unfettered joy of terror and the second more technical, but I went on about LARPing during the first and at the second told the squid story, so, well. Stephen Dedman is an Evil Bastard. He said so. After hearing his anecdotes, I believe it. The last was collaborative gaming which was us two and Sean Williams. His collaborator couldn't be there which kind of balanced the fact he has gotten immeasurably more published than... pretty much anyone? Also, he asked how David and I managed co-writing as a couple. Answer: we just do. Oh, and there was the Australian Horror and Fantasy Writer's reading, which was me, David and Stephen again. People turned up! David read his fiction from All Tomorrow's Zombies and Stephen from his Shadowrun novel. All I have in that line is a "flash" piece in Demon: The Earthbound so I read the start of Necromance instead. To the lady who came up to me after and asked when it was coming out because she was a lawyer and it sounded really interesting, I wish I'd got your email! There was just so much going on. The Computer Games seminar. Tracy and Laura's Killer Breakfast. Actual tabletop RPGs, boardgames and wargames by the square metre. The stalls. Oh heck: MISCELLANEOUS Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. People LARP Salute of the Jugger? Regularly? There's an international competition? Hunter the Gathering : ) That Japanese place on the riverside walk. Best steamed vegetables ever. Cosplay Steampunk "The Giant Flaming Broccoli Explodes!" The Authors Anonymous Twelve Step Program Did I mentioned we did signings? That we sold books! Wow. This can also be an exclamation. Current Mood: jubilant Current Music: Can you guess which soundtrack? Can you? (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 20th, 2008
4:36 pm	World Youth Day I think this about sums it up: Not even speaking as a pagan. Just a commuter. Current Music: 'Juju', Siouxie and the Banshees (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
5:22 pm	Roles to Play It is official : David and myself are Local Guests of Honour at the inaugural Gencon Australia. Along with such luminaries as Stephen Dedman and Marianne de Pierres, we shall be giving readings, dispensing advice and generally filling out panels on either side of the Overseas Guests of Honour whom everyone has actually come to see. Still, they're paying our expenses, there's a LARP stream, and I actually do want to meet Tracy and Laura Hickman. All details (including ours) can be found here. This is vindication, isn't it? I mean, of all those times I was told to stop wasting my time on stupid games. For all the times I told myself to stop wasting time on stupid games. For the incident with the black lycra body-stocking and the blood & bone fertilizer, ahem. What's something new I can say about writing horror? Current Mood: happy Current Music: The Dexter soundtrack (3 Comments |Comment on this)